How do you develop creative internet services?

Here are 3 different ways I come up with ideas to test out, that I've used for the last 10+ years. 1) Solve a headache you are having After spending hours trawling through marketing data and creating reports. I built a service to solve this problem, how I wanted it solving. Saved me hours each week. And grew our startup. 2) Combine two skills you have I love fishing. Also have 20+ experience as a developer. So I built a mobile app for fishermen to record their trips. 3) Create a "sister" product or one that is already successful. There's a plugin for Gmail that's amazing. I couldn't find a similar one for Outlook. So I lifted and shifting the idea to Outlook. I even got support from the person who built the Gmail plugin too.

You're excited about your idea. And want to add everything, including the kitchen sink to it. In my experience, this leads to the project failing. How I go about it now. Is to list out all the possible features I could include in the project, the idea. Then be ruthless. Pick one feature to work on. The one that you believe will bring the most value. The one that you can execute on and prototype that one. As an example, let's take 'Wordle' Wordle is a game where you have 6 attempts to find the 5-letter word. And you get hints along the way. It's a simple idea. But the creator of Wordle executed it incredibly well, world-class I'd say. So well in fact. He sold Wordle to The NY Times for a million dollars. Less than a year after launch.

if you have an idea for a software product or mobile app. And you aren't technical. There are solutions out there. I had an idea for a mobile app in the lockdown of 2020. Even though I had over 20 years’ experience in building software and apps. I wanted to get something designed and up and running before I wrote a line of code. I turned to what is called "no -code" builders. These platforms allow you to create software and apps without any coding experience. Using a product called Adalo. I got "version 1" of the app designed and built in less than a day. Yes, these tools can be expensive, even starting out there could be a cost involved to get started. But is the best way to get your idea into the hands of people in a matter of days.

Before you commit and launch. You need to make sure there is a market for your idea. I've spent months building things that no one wanted. Totalled up, I've lost years to projects that never made a penny. What I do when starting out (you need a small ad budget) is to. - Build a one-page website (Carrd is my favourite tool for this) - Create an email capture form on the site (I use MailerLite) - Run small ad campaigns on Google and/or Meta - Share my idea in communities on Reddit, Facebook groups If you get 30+ email addresses: - You've validated your idea - You have people to launch to when it's ready - You've developed a basic target audience to focus on - Finally, you know that there is both demand and channels.

I think scale and how your grow should be considered as your building. But not too much. I use service providers that allow you to scale up with a few clicks of a button. AWS and Azure are my go to providers. But many of the smaller hosting companies also provide amazing services.